Unlocking Smart Home Secrets with Eric Welander

In this episode, Eric Welander shares his journey into the world of smart home automation, discussing his experiences with Apple Home, the Matter protocol, and the integration of various smart devices. He emphasizes the importance of user-friendly technology for busy families and explores the challenges and benefits of using Matter in a mixed ecosystem of smart devices. The discussion also touches on the practicality of smart smoke detectors and the role of robot vacuums in maintaining a clean home with children. In this engaging conversation, the speakers delve into the evolving landscape of smart home technology, discussing personal experiences with various devices, the challenges of automation, and the importance of community engagement through live streaming. They explore the intersection of home theater systems and smart home tech, share insights on the best products of 2024, and reflect on their favorite Apple devices, highlighting the impact of technology on daily life.

Thank you to Zooz for sponsoring this podcast! For the best deals on Z-Wave smart home products you'll love:
https://www.thesmartesthouse.com

Erics youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@EricWelander 
Eric Welander's website: https://ericw.org/

Transcript

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I remember there was an early Lutron Caseta video I was editing at the hospital while my wife was asleep prior to actually having our first child. That ended up being another big video in my channel history in of it did really well. And that's why you have 11 children now, because you're like, every time we have a Hit video, yes, exactly. Welcome to Technical Difficulties, I'm your host, Pete Borchers. We are continuing with our creator series of interviews today and I'm super excited that we sucker today's guest into joining us. His name is Eric Wielander. He's got a very fast growing YouTube channel and he's gonna teach us today all about automating with Apple Home, his thoughts on the Matter Protocol, and he's gonna give us his one key trick for automating his home that keeps his family happy. So please stick around for that. Of course, these interviews are only made possible by our sponsor, Zeus. 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Now let's get on with the show. All right, we're back again. We've got a special guest part of our creator series. But with us as always is Brandon. Brandon, how you doing today? I'm doing great Pete staying warm. It's important. It's 20 out there. is it is schools canceled today for us because it's too cold in minnesota we've become wimps we become wimps and brett are vince vince is with us as usual this how you today I'm doing great. Also trying to stay warm. I got my space heater running in here. So I'm blasting heat in. Nice, nice. And Eric, we got a special guest today. Eric. Hey. Weelander. I always want to call you Whirlander. I don't know. Can you, like... We land is correct. You got it right side. I'm cool could you do me a favor and just change your name for me and then I can call you Eric Whirlane? Sure, whatever. I've gone by a million and one nicknames over my life at different phases. what's it? What's another go for it? So. hear you. Well, thank you for joining us today. For those who have not seen his channel, it's self-titled, Eric, the Eric Wielander YouTube channel. He's, he's big on Apple. He has a lot to talk about with matter and he always has great hair. So, Thank you. You really do. I'm not gonna lie. Look at that. It's like you see his thumbnails every time. Like, he's got it going on today. He does makeup, he's got a makeup artist beforehand, does his hair. All the behind the scenes you never hear about. Yes, my deepest secrets will be revealed. Eyeliner though, that's... I do actually have, because they're right here in my studio, do actually have a mirror that I- Before I film cuz it's a little screen in the right, you know anyways Yeah, eyes are going bad already. I'm getting old. can't let the little screen is like. OHHH! Terrible! Totally. Couldn't see it, couldn't see it. But yes, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, you've been a big Apple guy for a long time. Part of what we're doing here with people is we want to hear from different people's experiences, how they got into smart homes and what kind of their smart home philosophy is as well. So like you said, we know where you are now. Sure. Big, big an Apple. But tell us a little bit about what got you in to smart home and get your dog to stop barking. You That was actually not I don't yeah, I don't own any dogs. I have two cats there. They're not barking right there No, not that not that I can hear All right, so yeah, tell us a little bit about how you got into the smart home. So I started after graduated from college and got into iOS app development as my career I actually like this is whole other side story but ended up studying music in college and then got in after that from doing a lot of it outside of my music but I want to make money is what you're saying That's definitely one of the reasons for sure But with that went to Apple's WWDC developer conference for a number of years. There was a lot easier to get to back when the whole community was much smaller and very different kind of conference that it is now. And I remember seeing the HomeKit SDK announced in and then the I think it was 2016. I'm just not really thinking much of it. Right. It was just like, OK. another And fast forward a couple years and we actually moved from where we lived at the time in California back to be closer to family in the Chicago area. And I started to get into smart home tech. I got some Philips Hue light bulbs and just started playing around with those. I'd seen some people using Philips Hue light bulbs. And then from there, put them into Apple's home app, which I think was out by then. And at that time, was like 2017, we ended up moving to a new apartment. And then in January of 2018, I decided, you know, this YouTube thing sounds kind of interesting. I want to make a YouTube channel. And I didn't really know what to talk about at the time. think I just reviewed tech products that I happened to already have, right? As I'm sure a lot of people do. And I also had this idea, because I was developing apps at the time. that I was selling myself in the app store just outside of my job and wanted a place to talk about that process. But those videos ended up not really being very interesting aside from like one or two. So it was, you know, a time lapse of me coding can only go so far. And I didn't want to dive into the technical details of like, here's how I built this or why I built this this particular way from the software developer side. Cause obviously that's grown to be another big You know thing on YouTube or people talking about software development of various kinds including iOS app development And there's a lot of great creators doing that but that just wasn't what I wanted to do and so one of the things of tech that I was interested in at the time was Philips Hue lights, of course and so I did the Philips Hue dimmer switch as a video on my channel and that really took off Around the same time Apple came out with their first-generation HomePod and of course being an Apple person and using a lot of Apple tech and having those Philips Hue lights I got into why not using the HomePod and of course with my music background loved the idea that I could just speak to the air and Cue on some music and I'd already been using Sonos for a while too at that point so that one thing led to another and it just seemed to be that Smart Home Tech was what was sticking with my channel and it was also something that I was really enjoying at the time for my own just fun of building out automations and building out new Smart Home Tech. And in 2018, we ended up moving into a home, a single family home that we purchased. And so that's a whole other realm of Smart Home Tech that you can do. mean, a lot of people think that you can't really do Smart Home Tech when you rent, but you totally can. There's a lot of things you can do when you rent, but... Then once we we purchased a home that was really where things got interesting started doing smart thermostats did I remember there's an early Lutron caseta video I was editing at the hospital while my wife was asleep prior to actually having our first child and that that end up being another big video in my channel history like it did really well but I really enjoyed Lutron Caseta lights early on. And that's why you have 11 children now, because you're like, every time we have a kid. Hit video, yes, exactly. Now we only have three children, but I've had a few more, hopefully a few more hit videos than that. But yeah, so that's kind of how it all got started was really just being interested at first in smart lighting and then one thing leading to another of sort of trying out some smart home tech things, making videos about it and that process going back and forth in cycles over the years. And here we are with a lot more smart home tech installed in my home and a lot of talk about sense. not surprised that you came from a background, a coding background. That seems to be the path for everybody but me. You know It doesn't have to be though and that's that's I think actually you're asking about my like kind of philosophy of my smart home. Yeah. Yeah There's a lot of People who work in technology maybe around something adjacent to coding or coding who are on YouTube or some other platform talking about things like home assistant and homey Pro or you know other more advanced automation tools and especially with things like home assistant how or home bridge how you can code your own things and set up all kinds of detailed workflows. And I think that as a father of three kids and working with a YouTube channel as well as my main job, I can get into some of those things. I have a lot of the knowledge and understanding, but I don't always have the time that I would need to make that really good. And I want things where I can just set it and forget it. So really what I try and focus on in my channel are things that are sometimes venturing into those advanced categories, sometimes getting into things like Home Assistant or Homey Pro. What I love about Homey Pro or then stepping back into Apple Home specifically is there's a lot of opportunities to set something up and more or less forget about it and just be benefiting from the time savings of automation. So trying to make a smart home for busy people, I guess you could say. I mean, I think we need more of that. Yeah, so many people in, well, we do. Like so many people in this space. Yeah, mean, Home Assistant is big. I know you can do so much with it. I'm diving into it a little bit, trying to learn it to understand some of the differences and things, but it's hard, man. It's not easy to understand. And that's why I've used Apple products for like most of my life. I haven't used a PC in 25 years, probably. It's not because I'm a huge Apple fanboy, it's just that's what I know and it's easy and I'm like, why would I switch? Right? So I really appreciate that. I like that Apple is getting a little more in depth with some of their home automation stuff. Can you tell me a little bit about some of the changes Apple's made to maybe the last, like even the last few months, they've made some significant strides towards being a more complete home automation solution. Yeah, I I think there's a few different categories where they've made a lot of advancement. think first and foremost from folks who observe the smart home space already, the Apple support of matter is really important. think having a company the size of Apple pushing matter forward and being a part of the matter standard. And I think overall implementing it pretty well within their software stack is Really helpful for an instrumental in making matter of success from the user side I think just having all the different Features inside Apple home is a good starting point I think a lot of users should focus on scenes inside of Apple home, which is kind of like Amazon's routines or other other systems have a similar idea where you sort of have this preset condition or preset It's almost an automation, but just group of actions that are all accomplished together, right? You're gonna set your ceiling lights to particular brightness You're gonna set the lamp in the corner to another brightness You're gonna set this colored light display to a particular color or animation and all that happens at once It's a very simple thing relatively to set up and can be really handy to just have that one action that then triggers everything to be just how you want And then you can go from there into things like using Apple Shortcuts app to chain various events in your Apple life, let's say with your phone when you put it on your charging stand or even just pushing the action button on the side of your iPhone or things like that, tapping an NFC sticker. You could chain those things to automations inside of your Apple life with shortcuts, but then also connecting it back into Apple Home. And then I think from there, there's a lot that people don't explore, but is worth looking into around HomeKit, the developer framework, because, well, Apple has the Home app. The Home app doesn't surface all the functionality that HomeKit actually has. There's a lot of powerful things around certain automations, like conditional automations. So only continue with this automation if this particular light is off or only continue with this automation if it's after 9 a.m. in the morning. And that can be really powerful too when you start to chain things like sensors or buttons in your home into those HomeKit conditional automations which are made outside the Home app and third party Apple Home apps. That's really I think where you can take it to the next level. And then yeah from there of course you can get into Home Assistant and Homey Pro and all kinds of really advanced stuff. But Yeah, that's a nice ladder up, I feel like. Yeah, I was just, I've been exploring some trying to use some Apple script in just in the shortcuts app. And I gotta be honest, that is a step too far. Like it's just not, it's as hard as home assistant to try to figure out how to use the Apple script in there. the first person to complain about writing Apple script. Anytime you're Apple script. usually go to AI To write it although I usually end up making some kind of like a shell or you know bash script To accomplish the same thing, but that's then of course Mac specific and doesn't work on well I guess Apple script doesn't either so Yeah, true, true, true. So I don't know you guys had any questions about that, you're a matter guy. Like you clearly, already just mentioned matter. I mean, do you find, number one, matter, is it working the way you hoped it would? And do you find matter buttons as a useful thing in your life? Yeah, I really like to matter what? Okay, yeah, I mean I I know it's not beloved by by everybody for sure and I'm I think it's Kind of a bummer that let's say the z-wave and zigbee camps kind of got left in the cold out in the negative 20 degree weather in Minnesota and and yeah, really not really part of the standard. I would have loved to see, I think, Z-Wave and Zigbee included in it, but we can always wish Matter had features it doesn't have, like for example, sharing room names and device names across platforms. That would be nice, but I also think that it's an important step for the smart home just because it, one of the challenges with building the smart home tech, I imagine, looking at the outside, is just that there's so many different circumstances that people have to develop and test against. What about this kind of a wifi scenario? What about this kind of a thread or Bluetooth scenario? This size of a home, a big home, a small home, a home with this kind of smart home tech, a home with this kind of smart home tech, and I think for companies to have to support all these different smart home platforms separately was a really tall order. And so I think by having Matter standardize some of that stuff, it makes things more approachable and also makes it where certain things like Google's Nest Thermostat, their latest Nest Learning Thermostat, can work natively and officially with Apple Home where that deal might not have ever happened between those two companies otherwise. You brought up an interesting point with Zigbee as well. I always have to point out that the same people that brought us Zigbee are the ones that trying to push matter. And Zigbee was supposed to be that solution. So for those that aren't aware, it's the connectivity standards alliance that's behind this whole thing. so I just, I'm leery because of like Phillips Hue, for example. Well, yes, it does use Zigbee. you lose a lot of functionality if you try to connect their bulb or any of their products to other systems. And so my concern is that the same will happen with matter. And you had pointed out in one of your videos about snazzy labs, how he had covered like how the different ecosystems are at different like phases, ones on like 1.1, ones on 1.2 and 1.4. so there's no, no, uh, There's no thing like forcing them to get on the same level. so I think it's just like causing more confusion for the consumers. And then as you mentioned, if you try to add it into a second or third ecosystem, which probably isn't a big amount of people, but yeah, there's lots of issues with creating that second code and then the device names getting dropped off in their locations and stuff like that. can be frustrating. Yeah, Brandon, you bring up some good points. think that really quickly with the the idea of adding it to multiple systems and this kind of ties back into Home Assistant. I think there's there's a lot of people online these days talking about how the solution to your smart home is just to put Home Assistant at the center of everything. And I think that's like saying the best car to drive is a 1957 Mustang. because yes, it's beautiful and yes, it can work great in scenarios, but like, you're gonna have to put a lot of time and effort and work into making that be exactly what you want it to be. You can make it be a lot of things. And I don't know, I'm not a car guy, so maybe I picked a terrible example, but that's kind of where I think that Home Assistant is great to be a glue or a key piece of your smart home for certain areas, but. putting it at the center of your smart home where everything is based off of, know, in the tech realm, talking about Home Assistant being like sort of the source of truth in your smart home, where the, who's in what room and what's on, what's off. That's a tall order for any platform to fill, especially one that's more, has so many options and customizable things around it and changes so frequently with so many software updates. And I think that it's... I think that one of the challenges though with Matter is that a lot of people think it's this idea that you could just use your Amazon assistance today because you wake up feeling like it and then you use your Apple assistance the next day and then you use your Google assistant, you know, when you're at the office for some reason. And with that, I just don't think that's a maintainable thing for any of those companies to support, whether it's the accessory manufacturers or the platforms. because to have something where it's like, well, you know, I'm changing between all these different platforms, you're creating a bunch of change in your smart home by communicating it this way one day and this way another day. And I fear that one of two things will happen, either A, your smart home will become really unstable, or B, we're gonna be asking too much of Matter to standardize too much about the smart home, and then Matter's gonna become like email, where... The email standard, you know is is very static because you you know, well some companies would love to see it evolve It's just there's there's so much So much there that's just baggage it's not going to change because of the open standard it is and I don't want to see matter become so overarching that it becomes limiting and then Everybody's phone just like it as a mail client has a smart home client that just connects to their standard and boring smart home controls. And the last point, to your point on the different Matter versions, I think that's somewhat of a big deal, but only for niche devices. I think we underestimate how much, I'm guessing a lot of users are just really interested in lighting and maybe a handful of sensors and some buttons. And all of that's covered in Matter 1.0. And so that's really, I think, going to cover most people's needs. Yeah, I think you really nailed it with the home assistant comment because like for some people, if you're a tinker and you have the time and you enjoy that, sure, it's the end game for you. You can do all the automations, all the devices, as long as you're willing to invest the time. like that's such a small subset of people who want smart home tech. Most people are like, I just bought it on Amazon. I got it at Target. I just want it to work. And so they bring it home. I think with this new labeling system, I think they're more confused because at least before they could recognize like, okay, I see the Amazon logo on there. I see the Google logo or I see the Apple logo. So I know it's going to work. Now they just see matter and they don't know what matter is. So they're more confused than anything. Well, I do agree they dropped the ball a little bit with that. I would, in my world, if it had a Matter logo on it and you had a Matter hub, they would connect. And that's not always the case, just because there's a difference between the border routers and a non-border router. And like some things are hubs and some things are controllers, I mean. like they, it just doesn't work as seamlessly as they promised. And I think that's the biggest thing for me is that they just over-promised. what it was. You know, you have over Thread, Matter over Wi-Fi, like it's, there's still differences that you need to understand to get them all to work together. And you can't just be like, that has Matter, I have Matter, that's gonna work. It's just not that simple, unfortunately. So like for me, Matter is like, you know, the promise of Matter was like, you know, if I promised my kids, hey, we're going to Dairy Queen, but then I get there, like you're having a small vanilla cone and that's, that's your only choice, right? You're, they're all hyped up for a blizzard. Or whatever they think they're gonna get like nope you get you get this thing It's still good, but like it's not what we thought it was gonna be so that's where the disappointment is So Eric, you've got a mixed household. And by that, mean, I see that you have both Apple and Google devices playing side by side. How's that going for you? Are you still using Nest Thermostat and Doorbell? And what do you got going on in your house now? Yeah, so I played obviously with a lot of different tech over the years and I currently do use the Nest fourth generation thermostat. The other Google Home products that I have right now active in my home are the Nest Protect smoke detectors, which I wouldn't recommend, but I happen to have them installed. So they work for me. And if you have them, I don't think you should get rid of them, but I don't know if I go out and spend all that money on them now. got a bunch of them. Yeah, I got a bunch of them with my home. When we got the home, they were already installed. So I'm like, okay, sure. We've had this conversation before about smart smoke detectors, COD2 detectors just not really being worth it. There's so many other cheaper options that are out there that you don't like. Listening devices, Zeus has a relay unit that you through the ceiling. awesome. Yeah, I mean between Zeus and then also a lot of the voice assistants today including Apple's home pods as well as I believe Amazon's devices as well. mean it's a pretty unique sound signature to find a smoke alarm usually and so I think they can all pick it up and tell people about it. So the one marginal benefit of smart smoke detectors at least the Nest ones that might be worth it to some people is If a smoke, yeah, yeah, you get a notification, obviously, but that comes from a voice assistant. But if a smoke alarm goes off, let's say multiple floors or further away in your home, all the smoke alarms in your house start to sound like it's a fire alarm in a building. So then everybody is instantly aware throughout the entire home that there's a fire, which is a nice safety benefit. I don't know if it's worth the many multiples of more expense and then maintenance of dealing with smart smoke detectors, You know that that's that's the only benefit. I think that I can think of right now for smart ones Thanks. I can see, and I don't know if it's worth $120, although if you had asked me at four in the morning, I probably would have said yes, was that it can tell you which battery's dead in the smoke detector. Because oh my gosh, one night I couldn't, there was a beep and it kept beeping and I couldn't find it and I'm pulling every single battery out and I wound up taking all, I unplugged all the smoke alarms because I couldn't figure it out. And it was the carbon monoxide detector. So that was the problem I had. But they were all connected, they were all beeping. Once I took one battery out, they all started beeping because it was horrible. The real estate agent in me needs to tell everyone that you should be replacing them every 10 years because it comes up on every inspection I just had one yesterday and I was like I you should replace us but the other benefit I see with the nest is that I can correct me if I'm wrong but it does tell you the location of the problem and then if If you have the thermostat, it will also turn off your furnace. So I think that's that's kind of neat. Is it a hundred and twenty five or whatever it is? that much better than the new ones that you can get that are just like connected. Probably not, but it's still cool. And speaking of the battery, sometimes you go to a hardware store now and they'll just sell you a smoke alarm with the battery built in that lasts 10 years. And then when it's dead, you replace the smoke detector, which solves Brandon's problem too. That's actually makes a lot, lot more sense to do it that way. Cause then you don't worry about the batteries and then you will replace it. Cause I know people, don't remember. I replaced them all probably six years ago, maybe. And I'm sure I didn't write it down when I did. Right. So. The worst is when people don't replace them, they just put a new one next to it. Cause they don't want to deal with like the mounting and the removal and stuff. would totally do that. I have the first alert ones, like the one links. They were even more expensive than the Nest Connect, and I wish I wouldn't have got them either. Because even if you have an interconnected system, you don't necessarily need the smart function where it'll sound them all off anyways. yeah, that would definitely be my one pass that I've bought so far. Interesting. Yeah, I've looked at those one link ones. It's a I haven't talked to anybody who's bought them So it's good to hear they're not worth it, I So Eric, you believe in smart homes that manage themselves basically are relatively easy. They're easy to set up and they work the way they should and I think that's great. And I'm impressed because you brought your wife to CES this year, which means she must somewhat be on board with your nonsense. Is that a correct assessment? Yeah, more or less. I think that You know as as you're in a committed relationship someone there things that I'm sure you you love about them and that you put up with and I think the smart home tech Outer category for my wife And he is very supportive and uses it and I think there's certain things she really sees a big benefit from and one that's actually Usually it's from a YouTube stats perspective, doesn't usually get as much interest, but robot vacuums has been a huge thing for her. She loves having, we have three young children. And so at the end of a meal time, the dining room has all kinds of crumbs on the floor, no matter how you slice it. And so with that, it's really nice to. do some light cleaning for the dining room, get the dishes out and then send the robot in and it can do the rest. And that happens multiple times a day in our house. She gets annoyed obviously because of what I do that that robot might change like app to learn about how to control it or something. Although might fix a little bit of that soon. But other than that, I think she really likes the concept of robot vacuums saving a bunch of time and cleaning up and Yeah, I'm sure there's other things she probably mentioned that she finds beneficial, but there's definitely some annoyances about things not turning on when they're supposed to. it was funny also because a lot of our, know, Brandon, I know you brought your wife to CES. It's kind of commiserating about all this stuff in their homes. know, just being a significant other of using all the random stuff that doesn't work all the time. Well, the constant change of changing of products and testing different things. So is she at least excited that the robots are growing arms and legs? Yeah, I think so. I think so. So you've had your channel for quite a while. I'm looking at some of your earlier videos. You're promoting Arlo. Arlo, that video's got quite a few views. Do you still recommend Arlo? No, not really. I think they had a time where they had some good support for Apple Home with just having a live view of their video, which is an underrated concept because Apple has, if you've been following the video surveillance space for a while, Apple has this technology that they came out with in, well, they announced in 2019, came out with in 2020 called HomeKit Secure Video. And that's their own sort of video recording subscription service that's bundled in with your iCloud plan. So if you pay for iCloud for like backups of your phone and your photos, then you also for no additional cost get, depending on the plan you pay for, a certain number of cameras in iCloud that then save the video there. And the video storage doesn't count against your storage quota in iCloud. with that, I think there's a lot of people who... Ignore the concept of that there can be some other great cameras that can show a live view in Apple home Which gives you a lot of benefits inside Apple home But they don't play in Apple's home kids secure video space because they want to sell their own subscription and Arlo is one of those for a while and they still kind of show a live view in Apple home, but I think There's probably some better companies out there these days in the video space that was That was back in the days of the the Arlo Pro 2. think it was Yeah, it looks like it. It's just funny because around that same time I was also in the same camp and one of my very early videos was comparing Arlo to Eufy and at the time I was all about Arlo and now I'm like, I wouldn't recommend it because everything's, you know, behind the paywall with the subscription cost and Eufy at least has, you know. local storage and stuff that you can do for free and their cameras have evolved quite a bit since that time with the solar and the different connectivity and the quality getting better. I saw you had a more recent video that's got a lot of views too on the S3 Pro. So that's a pretty good one. That's an amazing camera. Yeah, and I think there's an analogy though that I made on my live stream a while ago, which is I think the S3 Pro is an except. yeah. So you have the S3 Pro 2 camera kit. That's the same kit that that I have to it's and it's working in this extreme extreme, so to speak, cold weather right now. I checked this morning. I think that's a great camera system, but it's kind of like recording video on or photos on your iPhone, which you you could do a lot as a creator online and all kinds of things just by shooting video and photos on your iPhone, but you're probably not going to get paid thousands of dollars to go photograph a wedding with an iPhone, at least in this day and age. And I think, you know, I see Vince, Vince, have some Ubiquiti gear, a Ubiquiti rack behind you. I have some Ubiquiti PoE cameras. think PoE cameras are kind of like the mirrorless camera of the surveillance space in that they take, there's so much more effort around just getting them up and running, but like the quality and the performance you get from PoE, power over ethernet. can be, I think is unmatched. And so if you can't run ethernet, the Eufy S3 Pro is an amazing camera and it has the solar panels built in, it comes with an additional solar panel. I think it's a great value, but it's never going to match the performance of a POE camera because that's just the technology there is just, know, it's like a bigger lens and a mirrorless camera versus the little lens in your phone. The physics just aren't there. That's a great analogy. We use Reolink here. Of course, I've got the Ubiquiti racks. I'm like, do I upgrade to unified cameras too? But it's kind of hard to justify the cost. But that 24-7 recording, I mean, you just can't beat that. So you want to tell, you mentioned your live stream just a minute ago when you were talking about Tell the people about your live stream and what you do and how you get, you get like thousand viewers on your lives. That's pretty. Thanks. Pretty good. It's fun. Usually every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Central Time, we get on YouTube live stream and talk about all kinds of smart home tech things. I answer questions, talk about the latest news that happened. And I have, if you go to ericw.org on my website, ericw.org slash live, there's a Google calendar or dot ICS iCloud calendar that you can subscribe to to get notifications in your calendar of like. when I'm live, or not notifications, but like just see on your calendar when I'm live and quickly get into the live stream. And then one of the things I'm trying to start in 2025, and maybe some of you folks will find yourself over there in the coming weeks and months, but I'm trying to get more guests joining me in the live stream to answer the questions together and talk about the news together. And I think it'll be a interesting element to have guests periodically. coming through the live streams to join me. this week, actually, as we record this, George Langebir is, I think, going to be joining me. But then we'll see who's able to come in future weeks, maybe some of you guys. Ironically, we're also recording with George on Thursday, but ours is pre-recorded. So, yeah, we won't be able to compare notes. And he'll be on The Tonight Show later on that week too, which is exciting. good. With Linus Tech Tips. Exactly. He hits the big time. So you've done 38 lives as the time of this will go live. What made you get started and how'd you pick that time? You know, I think with the live streams, Shane Watley is a great leader in the Apple home space. And he's probably the biggest YouTuber out there specifically talking about Apple and smart home tech. And I, know, he and I started our channels around the same time. And I really credit him to having a vision about this being a thing. There were multiple times since I started the channel in 2018 where I took a break from it. in part because various aspects of my life made it more difficult to keep up the channel or impossible to keep up the channel, but also just because I was questioning like, is Apple and smart home tech gonna become a thing that you can talk about online? And he had this vision and kept with it and really grew, I mean, in part because of his consistency and in part because of his talent, an amazing following, amazing channel. One of the key aspects of his channel for a while has been live streams. He has a great community around them. And I was really inspired by that and just felt like there was probably something I could do there that was, you know, similar, kind of riffing off of his ideas, but then a little bit more my own my own style of doing it. so starting last year after CES, I started doing these live streams on a regular basis for a while. It was on Fridays. Then I moved it to Thursdays just because it was better with my schedule. And yeah, it's it's turned out to be a lot of fun. I like YouTube's live streams is just like a platform. It's been very technically stable and easy to use. I use Ecamm live on the Mac as a tool to take, you know, my Mac and cameras and things and put them on YouTube and that works well overall. So. Is that how you get the live questions to pop up as well? Yes, yes, Ecamm makes a lot of that very easy. So they'll show your YouTube chat there. You click a button and then boom, it goes in this pre-determined like little overlay that you've made. I mean, there's... Thanks. I mean, there's a lot of layers to Ecamm that I haven't even explored. So I'm by far not an advanced user in that, but it seems like a very powerful tool. Well, Slick's Or the red exactly little bit but yeah no that's that's a very cool very cool thing I'm glad it's it's continues to grow but so my takeaway that from that is to copy Shane is that basically what you said I should Everything we do, just copy Shane. Yeah, he's the wonder. He did win the YouTubey for that category. Was a fellow nominee. Maybe next year, you'll one up him. So you have the WeeLander's Home Awards. When will the winner be announced? Because I see the voting has ended. Or did I just miss it completely? There was a video at the end of the year. I can tell you here, the winner of the best Smart Home Tech, and this actually gets into another topic that I think would be fun to discuss. The best Smart Home Tech of 2024, I said, was the Sonos Arc Ultra speaker, the soundbar from Sonos. I think it's an amazing soundbar. It sounds really good. Props to Sonos for being able to get that out. with the year they had with their app debacle and everything there. I view home theaters and just places to watch TV, video, movies as a key part of the smart home. And I had some folks in my comments that video kind of argue, well, maybe not, maybe that's not really smart home tech, but I think it is because There's so many automations that can be chained off of, I want to watch TV, so I want to dim the lights. I maybe want to adjust other things like the blinds in my home, or I want to get alerts from my cameras while I'm watching, because even though I'm immersed in this content, I might want to know if someone's at my front door. And so there's different problems that the smart home can solve in that scenario. And I also think there's just a lot of smart tech involved in getting that video to play in your home and sound good and look good and could be projectors, TVs, speakers, you know, the list goes on. Anyways, I don't, it's not strictly smart home tech, but I mean, I think there's a reason why Apple has TV and home at the top of their navigation and not just home. Maybe those two categories for Apple will grow to the point where they have separate tabs, but you know, there's a reason I think they're put together up until now. And I think, you know, there's a reason why things like the Apple Home app have Apple TV. inside of them and Apple uses the Apple TV as a home hub. So I don't know what you guys think about is, is smart, is home theater part of smart home tech or not, but I certainly do. So I definitely think it can be, and actually they might be doing it the right way instead of thinking about smart home tech as one thing and then adding in your home theater system or TV or whatever. Like start with the TV, right? And then be like, okay, how can I use that to smarten up the rest of my house? And that can kind of bring people in that way versus I think it's kind of traditionally the other way. like, thinking lights and all this stuff first. But if you start with the thing you have, which is a TV, and how can I make my house smart around that? I think that's kind of an- It's definitely the most expensive piece of technology that you're going to have in your home that everyone uses. You might have a more expensive computer or something, like you definitely share the TV. And so it makes sense to center around that. And then, yeah, it's an easy gateway to other things. So I think you're onto something there. And from a professional standpoint, if you talk to an integrator, I mean, that's going to be a big bulk of their business. for sure. Lighting, shades, audio video, which could include a theater or just a media room. Eric, can you tell us a couple of your favorite automations built around the home theater system that you have? So I don't actually do that. I just said it was a good idea. Yeah. Well, as I said earlier, you know, I like to have a smart home for busy people so to speak and with that I tend to be less into sensor based automations for especially complex things because my life isn't usually consistent enough where every time I sit down on the couch, even if it's after 7 p.m. Or every time that I even open, let's say the Netflix app or every time, you know, on my Apple TV or all kinds of different, every time I do X, Y, Z thing, the circumstances, the list is never consistent enough that there's like a reliable trigger to say, all right, given these circumstances, go do this. And I think there's a lot of people who might see that as what smart home tech must be, and then they get turned off by smart home tech, because they're just like, well, my life isn't that consistent ever. And so I, you know, I don't care. So I do a lot of scenes and settings in Apple Home, could be, you know, named differently in your smart home system of choice. But for us, we have a movie time scene, which then just, of course, turns off the lights and then closes the Smart Wings Matter shades in our basement so that the lights don't come through to the projector. And we happen to use a ultra short throw projector in that room right now. And then that just sets the scene for the movie. And I usually turn that on just by talking to Apple TV as I'm in the middle of queuing up whatever TV show or movie or something to watch. And then after that, it's just turning on a different scene like basement lights dim to go back into the world, so to speak, and that'll open back up the shades and turn back on the lights in the basement, but to a dim level. And I also think that's a really nice thing about having a smart home is trying to do consistent scene names, also relating those consistently to buttons, like we were talking about earlier with matter buttons across your home, of having a off, dim, and bright scene in every single room. And so people know, room name plus the word dim means I'm going to get a dim lighting scene of some kind. And then it also makes it easy to maintain automations or things. If you do have automations, because as you add or remove lights in a room, you're just reconnecting them to that scene. And that scene is what connects it to all the automations or buttons or things like that. And then people learn, I just I double tap any button in the home. It's going to turn all the lights off in that room. And that's smart. counter-intuitive in some ways, compared to a light switch, but it's at least consistent enough that people can learn it. I'm glad I'm not the only one that doesn't have a consistent routine like that. Every time you sit down on the couch, it is this time. It never works. I don't have any of those automations for that very reason. One thing I've liked about with Apple and, and homie pro I've been starting to do this too, is the ability to confirm on automation, right? So if I, I set, so you can set an automation based on what you think might be your team, instead of it executed automatically, you get a notification on your phone is like, do you want to do this? And then you can confirm. that takes away some of that. Ow, I just doing the stupid thing. I don't want it to do at this time right now. So I like that. So Yes, I think it's a great feature of both platforms. So I have to ask, are you still using your Vision Pro? I have mine behind me here. We should have linked you guys up so we could record your as disgusting as Brandon. Yeah, I have to like turn take my glasses off so I gotta fix my now. Don't forget your... There we go! Avatar is as creepy looking as Brandon's avatar. Yeah, I know. didn't get it. to power. It dies. It's like, oh, it's not gonna work. I wanted to show you guys my stupid googly eyes. Bar site or whatever. I think they're gonna have a cheaper version. They're gonna get rid of the exterior screen and some other things and then it might might gain some traction. But have you used it lately? Like for anything cool? Or what am I missing here? I think the new Mac mirroring mode is really well done. the ability to take a Mac with Mac OS Sequoia, it's like whatever the dot two releases of that, combined with Vision OS related version, you then get the option to have a wide or an ultra wide monitor. And I find that really useful for not necessarily things like video editing, but things where I want to have a lot of disk diff. disparate things up on the screen at once to sort of put the pieces together. Maybe I'm planning a more complex video or just trying to schedule my life, you know, with a calendar and all kinds of other stuff around or there can be, let's say a couple of times a week where I find that really nice to have. Is that worth the cost of the Vision Pro? Totally not. But it's a cool, it's very, it's very fun. I also love Apple's immersive video. Every time you watch one of those, feel like I just went to one of those really cool IMAX theaters at a science museum and just walked out of it like, wow, that was, know, Hawaii is so beautiful or those dock doors look cool. So they had the submarine one, right? The submerged. And then we were in Hawaii recently and we went on a submarine tour and I was just like blown away how it was so exact. I was like, whoa, this is where we were. This is the hatch the guys went up. It was like, here's the mess hall that they went back to. like the details, it was incredible. I just wish there was more of that. I think, you know, Jason Snell had an interesting thought on this. I think I heard it on the podcast, but he might have also put it on six colors dot com. And I kind of relate this back to a software developer idea you see sometimes in social media of people talking about building in public, right? Like, I have this startup and I'm building in public and, you know, like showing early versions of something as it's being built. Obviously that is antithetical to everything about Apple and how they work. It's part of what fuels the whole Apple root mill because Everything is behind closed doors until it's this amazing product that you know Steve jobs can pull the bullet pulled it off of it or John Ternes now Or whoever whatever Apple executive, but yeah, it's it's it's tricky I think the vision Pro is kind of a product category where Apple is building in public but I think they're not very good about treating it that way and so They definitely it carefully came off a year ago Like this is gonna be this revolutionary thing that's gonna change so many people's lives and I think a lot of people who didn't buy an Apple Vision Pro Kind of had a lot of FOMO at this point last year of like man. What what am I missing out by not having a spare, you$4,500 and change lying around to buy this thing which is understandably not not you know, that's a lot of people who don't don't have that. And I kind of think of man was my third use somewhere else. But at the same time, I think it is really exciting as someone who loves technology and loves seeing the advancement of it to have a front row seat to something that really is amazing technology. I don't know what you think, Brandon, but I just find the experience of just using the Vision Pro and watching content in it or doing anything, it feels very futuristic in a way that I haven't felt from anything else in technology. I think ever. Yeah, 3D movies on it are just incredible. And I wish I had two because I don't know watching a movie alone is kind of boring. And we have like a really nice theater. So like we spend a lot of time in there. And then the other thing I was hopeful that we would see more of is just like those interactive experiences or like we're playing a board game together and it's in the space. But you would need two of them for that. so it gets really the price is really, I think, the biggest limitation. If this was $2,000, then I would say, oh yeah, everyone needs to buy one. The $3,500, it's a tough pill to swallow. Yeah, I also think too it's one of those challenges where everybody's face and eyes and perception of reality and vision capability and I mean like literal like go to the eye doctor get a vision test like how good is your vision all those different layers Everybody has slightly different challenges or things to overcome there and it can really skew, I think, your perception of the product if you try it and maybe, you know, because it's such an early technology, Apple wasn't able to build it in a way where it's perfect for every kind of face and maybe that's physically impossible to do. But I think that's also part of it too, is that there's some people where Vision Pro just fits them well and it works well on their head and it doesn't fatigue them as much. And they're gonna think it's amazing, but the next person, gets really annoyed by it for some particular reason of how it fits their head or it makes them more motion sick in a certain way. And then that kind of skews a perception. And I think a way that Apple and frankly, a lot of tech companies haven't had to deal with in a while. And I think it's kind of something also that parallels smart home tech where something can work reliably for me or be fast for me in my home as a, you know, like checking out smart home tech. but then someone who watched my channel gets it and it's like slow and buggy and terrible for them. Potentially one of the reasons is they live in a very different home in a very different location with a very different internet connection speed and any number of other variables that make that product tricky to work in their home. And it's gonna be hard for Smart Home Tech because so many homes are so different. Yeah. That's the struggle with most, I would say most smart home devices. You just don't know the environment and it always, it makes a difference. It just makes a difference. the number of devices that you have. mean, it's like all sorts of factors that kind of go. Most of time too, yeah, it comes back to that internet connection. Well, not necessarily the internet connection. It's the wireless connection or the hardwire connection. whole network is their issue. So we got to start there. Yep, indeed. So all right. So we are running up on time here, Eric. I want to thank you for coming on the show before we let you go, because apparently he has things to do, like a job or something like. Super lame. Before I let you go, though, I want we talked about the Vision Pro. Give me your top five Apple devices of all time, the top five that really like, this is great. I was super excited about this. Still excited about it. So, top would probably have to be the iPhone 4. I actually have an iPhone 4S disassembled behind me, which was the first one with Siri. I shouldn't have said that word. Sorry. You can believe it. Yeah I will not do that. So yeah, I'd say the iPhone 4 with the first retina display, it was just a gorgeous little brick. then I'd say from there, it's probably the latest generation of MacBook Pros. Let's go with like the M1 version of like the current MacBook Pros, I think are just beautiful computers. I happen to have an M2 Max MacBook Pro that we're talking on right now. But I think those... 14 and 16 inch size are just amazing. And then, so that's two. I think from there it probably goes to one of the... Everything's terrible. Yeah, it's all terrible. Not worth your attention. I think it goes to one of the iPods. I loved some of those early iPods. wheel with like the clicky wheel Yes, with the wheel, liked, so my first iPod was the one after the clicky wheel when they went to the capacitive touch and it had those orange buttons on the top. I thought that was really cool, but it was because of my. so I don't know I'm biased there. then from there probably goes to the original iPad. I, I thought that was just a really nice device to have and, and hold. And then I think, I can't believe this wasn't number one, but it's like, it feels just like it works so well. You barely notice it most of the time. And that's AirPods Pro, the, the latest version of AirPods Pro. They're just like, I wear them in my ears, like a huge amount of every day, I use them to control my smart home, I use them to talk to my phone to do other things. It's become even more powerful. It's like the one feature that I actually find really helpful with Apple intelligence is that you can use it to ask ChatTPT to tell you a summary through your ears about something. And yes, it is from ChatTPT, so it might have mistakes as the disclaimer from Apple says. But it can be nice if you're just curious about some random fact or random thing and you're doing the dishes or you're doing something else around your home or wherever. And you don't, you you don't want to pull out your phone. You have your AirPods Pro and you can just talk to it and get read a nice little response of whatever it is. And then your mental wander can go off somewhere else. So those I think are probably my top five. Nice. That's a good. I was really hoping you were gonna pick the ones that were in your ears at the time. It would have been really odd of you. Yes I used some of those at school, but I never owned one myself Yes, that is a legit Apple poster like a real Apple poster so$11,000 on it. Definitely just age yourself, and that means that we're all around the same age, because I distinctly remember going to a computer lab and having the colored math. I think was another game on 2E. 2C. Apple 2C. But awesome. Well, Eric, thank you once again so much for coming on the show. I enjoyed this conversation. I hope our viewers enjoyed the conversation. We've got more creators coming up. I think it's an exciting series. So thank you once again. Any plug you want to make? Yeah, you can check out my links in the description of the podcast or also just visit erikw.org. Spelled either way, it's E-R-I-C-W.org is the actual address, with a K we'll redirect. Yeah, you can check out my stuff there. Alright, so we'll get that in the description. Please subscribe to our channel, check out Eric's channel, subscribe to him, and thanks once again for watching and we will see you Thank you.